9-26-2015 G. Soros writes: Here are the six components of a comprehensive (refugee) plan.

First, the EU has to accept at least a million asylum-seekers annually for the foreseeable future. And, to do that, it must share the burden fairly – a principle that a qualified majority finally established at last Wednesday’s summit.

Adequate financing is critical. The EU should provide €15,000 ($16,800) per asylum-seeker for each of the first two years to help cover housing, health care, and education costs – and to make accepting refugees more appealing to member states. It can raise these funds by issuing long-term bonds using its largely untapped AAA borrowing capacity, which will have the added benefit of providing a justified fiscal stimulus to the European economy.

It is equally important to allow both states and asylum-seekers to express their preferences, using the least possible coercion. Placing refugees where they want to go – and where they are wanted – is a sine qua non of success.

Second, the EU must lead the global effort to provide adequate funding to Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey to support the four million refugees currently living in those countries.

Thus far, only a fraction of the funding needed for even basic care has been raised. If education, training, and other essential needs are included, the annual costs are at least €5,000 per refugee, or €20 billion. EU aid today to Turkey, though doubled last week, still amounts to just €1 billion. In addition, the EU also should help create special economic zones with preferred trade status in the region, including in Tunisia and Morocco, to attract investment and generate jobs for both locals and refugees.

The EU would need to make an annual commitment to frontline countries of at least €8-10 billion, with the balance coming from the United States and the rest of the world. This could be added to the amount of long-term bonds issued to support asylum-seekers in Europe.

Third, the EU must immediately start building a single EU Asylum and Migration Agency and eventually a single EU Border Guard. The current patchwork of 28 separate asylum systems does not work: it is expensive, inefficient, and produces wildly inconsistent results in determining who qualifies for asylum. The new agency would gradually streamline procedures; establish common rules for employment and entrepreneurship, as well as consistent benefits; and develop an effective, rights-respecting return policy for migrants who do not qualify for asylum.

Fourth, safe channels must be established for asylum-seekers, starting with getting them from Greece and Italy to their destination countries. This is very urgent in order to calm the panic....

The operational and financial arrangements developed by the EU should be used to establish global standards for the treatment of asylum-seekers and migrants. This is the fifth piece of the comprehensive plan.

Finally, to absorb and integrate more than a million asylum seekers and migrants a year, the EU needs to mobilize the private sector – NGOs, church groups, and businesses – to act as sponsors. This will require not only sufficient funding, but also the human and IT capacity to match migrants and sponsors. https://www.project-syndicate.org/print/rebuilding-refugee-asylum-system-by-george-soros-2015-09

11-3-15 Soros doesn't care that these migrants and Syrian war refugees are largely Muslim men and that intelligence agencies fear that many of the new arrivals have connections to Islamic terrorism.

Besieged Hungarian premier

Viktor Orbán said the ongoing invasion of his country is "driven, on the one hand, by people smugglers, and on the other by those [human rights] activists who support everything that weakens the nation-state. This Western mindset and this activist network is perhaps best represented by George Soros.

"His name is perhaps the strongest example of those who support anything that weakens nation states, they support everything that changes the traditional European lifestyle," Orbán said in a radio interview. "These activists who support immigrants inadvertently become part of this international human-smuggling network." http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/260665/soros-national-borders-are-enemy-matthew-vadum

4-3-2017 Today Orbán is no longer the darling of the western establishment, but rather the role model of illiberal democrats across Europe, from Marine Le Pen in France to the current government in Poland. Having transformed his own country into an illiberal democracy, Orbán has become a European actor, directly challenging German chancellor Angela Merkel and her vision of an inclusive and integrated Europe. Emboldened by Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, he proclaimed in his 2017 state of the nation speech: “We were black sheep, but now we are a success story, and this is also acknowledged – although perhaps reluctantly – by those who don’t like what we have achieved and how we have achieved it. Nothing succeeds like success.”

Orbán believes that liberal democracy has had its day and a more nationalist illiberal era is here, obviously started by him in Hungary. In his struggle against “money, the media, global governance and an open global society” – a very clear reference to Soros, with thinly veiled antisemitic overtones – he feels strengthened by the new powerholders in the UK and US, while at the same time banking on the continued political coverage of the European People’s party (EPP), the most powerful political group in the EU. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/03/eu-tolerated-viktor-orban-hungarian-central-european-university

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some selected comments to above article:

LostinthesupermarketCiccoBottom line: EU citizens do not elect their 'presidents'. There's a democratic trail? Only if you're desperate to make it.

As for May (unelected you say?). Tell that to her constituents. Is her position therefore undemocratic. Not under our constitution - we have never elected PMs, we elect MPs whose parties make that choice. It's diffuse? Yup, but about five stages less diffuse than the EU system you defend.

...t's the left-liberal incompetence that has landed them in a non-winnable position. Centralization of power - what a meaningless clichee. Orban is the PM of a near-2/3 majority government - who should the power be shared with?

There's nothing liberal or democratic about allowing huge numbers of people from decidedly illiberal societies into one's country against the wishes of its people and seeking to stifle dissent on the issue, yet that is exactly what Merkel (not Orban) has done.

He is giving a voice to probably the majority of Europeans who do not subscribe to political progressive ideology, but who see their political system hijacked by a progressive political class, supported by an equally politically progressive media. We are seeing decisions taken which will impact on all our lives, as well as future generations, without any consultation or discussion.

I genuinely believe that things could turn sour very quickly for those responsible.

This is what many people don't understand. Orban in Hungary, PiS in Poland etc. aren't some sort of libertarian leaders who just don't like the EU and muslims. They aren't some sort of defenders of secular values against Islam. They pride themselves on being "defenders of Christianity", and not the modern kind. If you are looking for an anti-EU hero you can root for, it's probably not Orban.

It's easy to single out Hungary and Orbán for not going along with the 'liberal, all inclusive, integrated, bankers paradise 'plan' for Europe, but then again, his mandate is to protect, serve and represent the people of Hungary, not the neo-liberal bureaucrats in Brussels.

Yes, how dare those pesky Eastern European Nations not bow to every dictate from the EU, how dare they have anything to say about their collective cultural and national heritage!kodicek

.... just like Comrade Hruschev thundering against the Hungarian rebels in 1956 attempting to free itself from the Soviet yoke. Bravo, Guardian, to have tolerated and even published such an utterly arrogant piece of "liberal" totaliarian propaganda, which is intent to anull the wishes of Hungarian electorate.

,,This week, Merkel took a strong stand against Orbán, as he attacked her refugee policies in a by-now familiar Islamophobic, far-right speech at the EPP meeting in Malta."Here we go again... Islamophobic... far-right... It's quite pathetic really, that left wing journalists never get to understand the right wing point of view, as presented by Orban, and don't even give it a try. Like infantile little kids they can only shout one of the next 6 names taken from the left wing standard discussion vocabulary: Far-right ! Islamophobic ! Populist ! Racist ! Facsist ! Xenophobic ! Can't you really come up with anything other than that for a change ?